Classicism-Era Ceremonial Portrait of MF Doom

Technique: Canvas, oil.
Size: 100 × 67 cm.

The portrait belongs to the "Only for Kings" series, in which Alexander Chursin casts himself as a kind of court painter to hip-hop and depicts rappers in the manner of the Old Masters. His subject is MF Doom, recognizable by his distinctive metal mask, presented here as a ceremonial state portrait of the Classicist era. The image is carried onto canvas in the language of official portraiture; it is in this collision of classical form and contemporary content that the cycle's idea resides. The series was shown in 2015 at Tipografiya in Krasnodar and the MAKARONKA centre in Rostov-on-Don.